Chattanooga for relocation? (insurance, hotel, houses)

[Elmich1954]

Hello everybody,

My wife and I are considering a relocation from Chicago to Chattanooga. We have a few other cities/states on our radar, but I've heard good things about Chattanooga from a friend who used to live there.

Our interests include the Catholic church, gym, fishing, restaurants, going to the movies, shopping, outdoor walks and biking, and community service.

I work in Academic Administration and my wife is in Hotel Management. We like the fact that Chattanooga seems to be a place where we could find good jobs and also be able to enjoy our free time. The fiber network Chattanooga has is really cool too.

If you have relocated to the Chattanooga area, currently live or have lived in Chattanooga, please let us know your perspective. What are some of the pluses? Minuses?

[RustedFox]

The wife and I just visited Chattanooga two weeks ago with an eye towards relocation.


We were supposed to go in January, but on the day our flight was supposed to leave, our area got hit with a tornado warning, so we [wisely] exercised our trip insurance option, and rescheduled. Someone here PM'ed me asking about the trip; but I deleted the message accidentally and never got back to them. If you're reading this - sorry, amigo!




A few talking points to get this thread started off:


- Overall, we thought that the city was very cool - but just a tad on the small side for what we were looking for. We're on the younger side (36 and 35 years old), so take that into consideration. In no way am I being critical of Chattanooga right off of the bat; we had a great trip.



- Downtown restaurants are adequate (I really loved Mayan Kitchen). There's definitely a "microbrews and burgers" vibe to downtown. Downtown was very clean and felt very safe. We had a blast at the Pinball museum (wife and I are both classic game/pinball aficionados), and there's a bar on the north side of town that is just packed with classic arcade machines (The Coin-Op Arcade). Overall, we found the restaurants FAR better than average in terms of food quality/inventiveness. Honorable mentions include "State of Confusion", "Stir", and "The Honest Pint" (the sandwich that I had here was killer).



- We stayed at "The Chattanoogan" hotel. Very nice. The pub downstairs had AWESOME food. My wife is a chef, and she is a HARD judge of "pub grub". I upgraded us to a suite with a Jacuzzi tub. EVERY night we enjoyed a bottle of wine and sat in that tub. Felt great after a day of hiking. Bed was super soft.



- Definitely see "Rock City Gardens". My wife and I are both "nature folk" and we absolutely loved the walking trails and gardens and such. We planned to eat lunch up on top of the mountain, but the restaurant was closed that day. We would have done more hiking overall, but we weren't blessed with good weather on the whole. (We still got a satisfactory amount of hiking in.)


- You'll have no shortage of churches to choose from. Neither my wife nor I are particularly religious. She had never been to the region before, and was surprised by the sheer number and presence of houses of worship. I said to her "They don't call this the Bible Belt for nothing." She replied: "THIS is the BIBLE BELT?!" Again, not being critical - but it seemed to her like there was a church on every corner. She wasn't wrong.



- One thing that we didn't get to do (but really wanted to) was the downtown climbing gym. It seemed really cool; we just didn't bring any clothes/etc that we could climb in. That, and the wife's sciatica was agitating her - so we said "we'll save that for next time".


On the whole, we thought that the city was very nice - but we're looking for something a touch bigger for our own reasons. We will DEFINITELY return to Chattanooga to have fun in, though. It's hard to find something to be critical of, but if I had to, I'd say that the downtown "grid" was a bit confusing in terms of one-way streets and geographic layout - but I'm really nitpicking here. The locals were certainly welcoming and friendly.



Best luck in your quest.

[Elmich1954]

Thanks for the detailed insight, Rusted Fox. You really described some great points and Chattanooga does sound intriguing.
What other cities were you interested in moving to?

Funny thing is I was living in South Florida at the time when I met a friend who had recently relocated to Florida from Chattanooga (for family reasons). He really raved about Chattanooga and it's always been on my mind as a possible relocation place.

I've lived overseas in some tropical places, plus South Florida, so heat and humidity don't bother me. Not a huge fan of shoveling snow.

That pinball museum sounds sweet. And I like being outdoors as well, so nature is a bonus.